We (H.B. and I), saw and experienced some amazing things.  Highlights like seeing the snow-capped peaks of the Himalayas, meditating in the Dalai Lama’s own temple, visiting some of the world’s most ancient and spiritual places, like the holiest Hindu city of Varanasi on the banks of the Ganges, watching the sun rise. Watching life on the river banks, from people bathing and performing their daily devotions to a man doing his washing the time honoured way – beating cleanliness into the clothes with a stick on a slab of rock.

The Sikh Golden Temple at Amritsar, covered with solid gold by a Maharajah after he had his prayers in the temple answered.

And the magnificent Muslim monument to peace and everlasting love – the Taj Mahal, which I was prepared to be blasé about, but which totally blew me away with its romantic origin and gigantic, yet elegant proportions.

Riding an elephant in the rainforest in search of a tiger! We didn’t see one, but we have pictures of tiger paw prints as an everlasting reminder of how close we came to seeing one of the planet’s most intriguing creatures in the wild.

So many wonderful memories.

I can recall them anytime I want by putting on a DVD taken from my digital camera.

This got me thinking back to the time before fancy technology, when memories could only be recalled by drawings or paintings, or by reading one’s memoirs of travels and adventures.  Others could share them, not by sticking on a DVD, but having the privilege of being allowed to read the traveller memoirs or by asking them to talk about their adventures at local meetings in the town hall.

Hopefully they weren’t accompanied by a tiger skin, but I fear often there were gruesome souvenirs – up to and including kangaroo paw bottle openers.

Now even the memoirs can be seen by all via this medium, the wonderful World Wide Web.

My hope is that this medium is not the only memoirs that people will write, and digital pictures not the only way images are recorded.  It’s all so ephemeral, you see.  It can all be wiped away by the touch of a button.

The Web is wonderful but so are a journal and a scrap book.  I hope neither will ever go completely out of fashion.

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